OGDEN, Utah — A community banded together in Ogden after seeing a shelter in need of food and supplies.
It started with a tweet posted Tuesday showing a picture of two cans of peaches on the pantry shelves at The Lantern House.
“I was just on Twitter and saw a picture that someone posted of the fruit shelf and saw that they were pretty bare on supplies, so decided we were gonna do something about it," said Ogden native Devin Masters.
Community members shared the tweet of the empty shelves and reached out to friends for contributions.
“I mean we had donations from a ton of people in Salt Lake," said Masters. "I had friends donate from across the country. We had donations come in from Kentucky from North Carolina. So it’s really cool to see people with Ogden ties help out."
By Saturday, they raised $4,000 and set out to purchase items to bring to the shelter.
“We just went to Costco and loaded up as much as would fit in our car," said volunteer Joanna Smith. "Our SUV is filled to the gills with as much as we could.”
For Smith, who drove from Salt Lake City to help out, the donation drive hit close to home.
“We have family experiencing homelessness. I’ve been a single mom before," she said. "I've had to live with family in those in-between times, and feeling invisible is often the parts that make it impossible.”
Lauren Navidompsis, the executive director of The Lantern House, said the donations came at a time when they needed them most.
“We’re seeing about 53% of the people falling into a homeless situation being a brand new situation, never been homeless before, which is just, it’s a staggering number, and people are falling into housing and food insecurity quicker than we can find solutions," said Navidompsis.
Navidompsis says donations are drastically down right now.
"We're actually seeing about a 32% decrease in donations," she said, "We're attributing that to just the cost of living, inflation and everything, but we still are trying to operate with what we can and so without communities' support like this, we couldn't serve those in need."
She and the other volunteers hope this community effort serves as a reminder to those who are fortunate enough, to donate to local shelters.
“I don't see it in terms of pallets, I see it in terms of babies getting lunches and tummies being fed and tucking your kids in at night with a full tummy and that matters most," said Smith.
